Nor-Tec Rifa!

At the dawn of the twenty-first century the Nor-tec phenomenon emerged from the border city of Tijuana and through the Internet quickly conquered a global audience. Marketed as a kind of ethnic electronic dance music Nor-tec samples sounds of traditional music from the north of Mexico and transforms them through computer technology used in European and American techno music and electronica. Tijuana has media links to both Mexico and the United States with peoples currencies and cultural goods--perhaps especially music--from both sides circulating intensely within the city. Older residents and their more mobile cosmopolitan-minded children thus engage in a constant struggle with identity and nationality appropriation and authenticity. Nor-tec music in its very composition encapsulates this city''s struggle resonating with issues felt on the global level while holding vastly different meanings to the variety of communities that embrace it. With an impressive hybrid of musicology ethnomusicology cultural and performance studies urbanism and border studies Nor-tec Rifa! offers compelling insights into the cultural production of Nor-tec as it stems from norteña banda and grupera traditions. The book is also among the first to offer detailed accounts of Nor-tec music''s composition process.